Facebook plans rev-share model for 5-10 minute videos

Facebook's VP of partnerships Dan Rose, at the last Code Media conference talked about the social media giant's next moves in video, including its desire to commission a slate of 5-10 minute content, which in the early stages it will pay the creators to make. Only in the early stages though, since Rose explained, according to "Recode": 

Our goal is to get it seeded and then move to a model that scales over time with rev-share. Our business model in all of these areas is going to be rev-share, and that’s our hope with live as well.

Facebook Live has already shown off this strategy: companies like BuzzFeed and the New York Times were paid under the terms of one-year deals to broadcast on Facebook, but those deals are now ending, even if they will be probably extended - even if the longterm model is rev-share, said Rose.

Facebook’s plans for premium (but still shorter-form) video should be an opportunity for the music industry as well as for MCNs and media companies. As with Snapchat, Spotify and other platforms, there’s an opportunity for labels and artists to dream up their own formats based around 5-10 minute episodes, and then (for a limited period) bag funding from the platform owners to test those ideas.

There are, without a doubt, licensing issues around formats that use the music itself, but that should not be a barrier to developing these format ideas.

Rose’s confirmation yesterday that Facebook is preparing to launch its video-heavy smart-TV app in the coming weeks is another prod to up the efforts on this front.